Packaging SubLib 0.9 for Debian
Issues
=== [SOLVED] Licensing / Copyright [SOLVED] ===
?SubLib is GPL-2+ licensed according to the COPYING file and the source code file headers.
?SubLib includes the source code of NCharDet and compiles it into one library file called ?SubLib.dll.
- The source code of NCharDet says it's licensed under the MPL 1.1 / GPL 2+ / LGPL 2.1+.
- The source code of NCharDet says "The Original Code is mozilla.org code".
- The author of NCharDet says on the project website: "About the code - All I have done is 'port' the Java code to C# - it took about an hour of pretty basic syntax conversion."
The source code of chardet from mozilla can be found at: http://mxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/intl/chardet/src/
The Java 'port' (JCharDet) of the original code chardet from the mozilla can be found at: http://jchardet.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/jchardet/jchardet/src/
The JCharDet is licensed under MPL 1.1 according to the SF.NET project page, the source says NPL 1.1 though, see: http://jchardet.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/jchardet/jchardet/src/nsPSMDetector.java?revision=1.1.1.1&view=markup
chardet from mozilla is licensed under MPL 1.1 / GPL 2+ / LGPL 2.1+, see: http://mxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/intl/chardet/src/nsChardetModule.cpp
So chardet licensed as MPL / GPL / LGPL was ported to Java (called JCharDet) which is licensed as (M|N?)PL.
JCharDet then was translated to C# (called NCharDet) as the author says on the website and then was licensed under MPL / GPL / LGPL. The author of NCharDet is not holding the copyright, as he clearly shows in the header file of his source, he lists "Netscape Communications Corporation" and only added himself as contributor.
So to my understand he re-licensed JCharDet from (M|N?)PL to MPL / GPL / LGPL which is probably not legal, as he is _not_ holding the copyright of JCharDet.
What makes it a bit odd is that JCharDet is also not listing any copyright holders in the Java source besides "Netscape Communications Corporation". So was JCharDet relicense from MPL / GPL / LGPL to MPL already not legal?
ps: how about http://code.google.com/p/chardetsharp/? It's MPL1.1 licensed, but there is a chance to change devel's mind, since his fork comes from a GPL/MPL/LGPL sofware. -- tiagovaz
Sublib's upstream talked to Jchardet developer who agreed adding GPL to his code. Now jchardet is GPLed: http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?group_id=85452&release_id=640620